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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unusual experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding structure based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to community leaders imparting narratives and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could sound quirky, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it inhales by 80°C, helping the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a ex- writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the possibility to shift your viewpoint or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The winding installation is among various components in Sara's engaging art project celebrating the traditions, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also draws attention to the group's challenges associated with the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

At the lengthy entry incline, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of skins trapped by electrical wires. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, wherein solid coatings of ice appear as changing weather melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense manually. The herd crowded round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding process is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. Yet the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also highlights the sharp contrast between the western understanding of electricity as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent essence in creatures, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's hard being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

She and her family have personally clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a series of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, art seems the exclusive sphere in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|